The sun's gift.

Last night we were heading out to the mall just as the sun was setting. There was a beautiful sunset. I explained what a sunset was and asked Michael what he thought of the sunset. He said, "I like the orange clouds the sun made for me." His favorite color is orange and the sunset was primarily orange. I just thought it was cute that he figured that the sunset was special ordered just for him.

Overshadowing

I haven't talked much about Michael here. He's an amazing kid. At 3 years, 3 months I'm starting to think of him as a little kid and not as my baby or toddler any more. He's so smart and helpful. He loves to figure out how things work and always wants to help fix things. He's had the opportunity to help both his father and grandfather with plumbing and car projects and loves it. He loves to be read to and we spend at least 45 minutes a day reading. He knows all his letters, both uppercase and lowercase, and he knows a lot of the letter sounds. Just this week he's started to help me read books. We were reading a Little Bear book and he could read the words "cat", "duck", "hen", "bear", and "owl" each time they came up.

He plays with Ava now and I adore watching them play together. The sound of the two of them giggling over playing tug of war or watching them roll around wrestling just fills me with happiness and pride.

He also talks all the time. Seriously. All the time. Constantly. Even when he's alone in his room I'll hear him talking through the monitor. He's talking in full sentences and is pretty much intelligible to his family and to strangers at least 90% of the time, so my speech concerns for him have disappeared. All the talking is wonderful, except for one drawback.

He spent this past weekend with my parents. Friday night through Sunday evening we were without him and it gave us a lot of one-on-one time with Ava. It was amazing. She was a lot more active and assertive and talkative when he was gone. She was the one getting to direct the play. She was the one being listened to. She was the one getting all the attention. It made me realize exactly how much attention goes to Michael when he's around. It's so natural and easy to interact with the child that is talking to you and so easy to overlook the one who is silent.

I guess I need to find a way to let Ava take center stage more often even when her brother is home. She's a delight. She's funny and sweet and interested in everything going on around her. When she gets our attention she just blossoms. Now how to make it happen without making her brother feel left out?

Boo Boo

There’s nothing like having to explain to strangers (and her teachers, and the nurse at the ENT’s office, and your mother….) why your toddler pitifully wails, “Boo boo, boo boo” over and over again while you’re zipping up her coat.

You see, a couple of weeks ago Ava had an itchy spot that she was scratching bloody every time we put her to sleep. Usually we have her in pajamas with a separate top and bottom, but I remembered that a friend had given us some zippered footed pajamas as some hand-me-downs that would be perfect for this situation because she wouldn’t be able to get to the itchy spot. It worked perfectly. She loved the footed pajamas. They are brown with colored dots and she would point to dot after dot saying “da, da, da, da……”. She didn’t want to take them off when she woke up and wore them for about two days straight.

Then……. One day at nap time I accidentally caught a little bit of her thigh in the zipper. It hurt and she was pretty upset, but she did forgive me and went to sleep with the pajamas on. Then that night when it was time to put it on again, she was worried and expressed her concern to her daddy by saying, “boo boo, boo boo” over and over again. He reassured her that he would be really careful and he was. But then at the last second she looked down as he was pulling the last bit of zipper up and he caught her chin in the zipper. Well, it hurt and she completely lost it. She pretty much sobbed until he took her back out of it and dressed her in something else for the night.

She’s refused to put them on ever since. I left them hanging over the banister for a while and every time she passed by she’d say, “boo boo, boo boo!” I finally put them away. Well, now every time she comes near a zipper she’s afraid. Her coat is a major problem, but it’s winter. We can’t avoid the coat. She’s even afraid of being buckled into her car seat. It’s crazy how she’s overgeneralized the situation and I don’t have the slightest clue how to deal with it. I’m not using the pajamas any more, but we have to use the coat and the car seat. Anyone have suggestions?